


The Lion, Cyphered

by moreagaara



Series: The Emperor Revived [13]
Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Battle, Blood, Blood Magic, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual Possession, Conversations, Deviates From Canon, Emperor Revived, Fanfiction, Feral Behavior, Flashbacks, Gap Filler, Gen, Literature, Mental Link, Mindfuck, Multiple Personalities, Possession, Post-Canon, Questions, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Soul Bond, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23135992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moreagaara/pseuds/moreagaara
Summary: Hon hon, am so punny!  -shot- Also no, Primam Tonat is not dead.  He lived for fifteen thousand years on account of he was a secret Perpetual, and not even he is aware of this.  The full dismemberment just means it'll take him a wee bit longer to come back.  Sadly, I have not written anything else about him that I have completed.  But he is still alive, is my point.Peep ownership:Games Workshop:  WH40k and relatedme:  the writing and Primam Tonat
Series: The Emperor Revived [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1447444
Kudos: 3





	The Lion, Cyphered

_Lion, are you awake?_ the other voice in his head asked. The voice that had no name but Cypher. In response to its question, however, Lion only stretched and sent a wave of affirmation towards the voice; he might be awake, but he didn’t feel like speaking. _The Custodes didn’t let us in to see the Emperor,_ the voice was saying now. _And Guilliman had us arrested._

The Lion’s eyes opened—or felt like they had; the eyes of the body he and Cypher shared had already been open—and he looked at the other side of a powerful force field he had beheld only once before. When he had last seen it, there had been a monster on the other side; a creature half winged lizard and half man, with horns on its head that curled in on themselves. It had acted like the beasts Lion had once hunted on his homeworld, and like there was a greater intelligence within that had somehow grown stunted. He had felt a strange familiarity with it…

 _Yes, that’s very nice,_ Cypher’s voice shook him out of his reverie. _But we’re the beast now, and unless you want to stay in here until the Emperor wakes up—which I will remind you is highly unlikely—we need to leave within the next hour or so._

The Lion sighed, and then pushed Cypher out of the way to step into control himself. He was for a second bewildered—as always—by the comparative dullness of his borrowed body’s senses, but shoved past the feeling just like always. Once he was certain of his control, he stood up, then stretched. He took a breath in, closed his eyes, and slowly let it out. When he opened his eyes again, the body he was sharing with Cypher no longer existed in realspace; Lion was certain that they were in the Warp, somehow, and Cypher was equally certain that they weren’t: the space they were in didn’t have the same murderous feel to it, and so could not possibly be the Warp.

Not that Lion particularly cared for his part what the space they were in actually was; whatever it was, it was separate from reality, and that meant that the force field that had been holding him captive did not exist, though Lion could see its echo in the space they were in. As he had done many times before, he simply walked out of his cell and left the place that should have been his prison. Let his guards—he supposed they would be Custodes in this case—wonder where he had gone; it wasn’t his problem anymore.

 _We should leave Terra,_ Cypher was saying. _We shouldn’t have come here in the first place. I did tell you—_

 _Cypher, you have told me many times that no one will believe that we are sharing a body, and I still agree with you,_ Lion finally replied. Instead of heading for the spaceport as Cypher wanted, however, Lion turned towards the mass of buildings that comprised the underbelly of the Imperial Palace, and the world-spanning hive city that surrounded it. _But like I said to you when we rescued my brother in the first place, let a fool have his dream. The Emperor can and will separate us, if we can just get to him and explain._

Cypher sighed heavily, and didn’t bother to give words to his disbelief. _If you mean to stay here, we’ll have to find a proper disguise. The white hood over the power armor is getting a bit too distinctive._

Lion didn’t bother to reply. Once he felt they were a safe distance away from the Palace, he slipped his body back into realspace in the deep shadows under a creaking, ancient building that threatened to collapse any second. Then he sat down, and released his control over his shared body, waiting for Cypher to resume command. It didn’t take very long for Cypher to do exactly that, or to stow their white cloak away and in doing so find a black cloak Lion had obtained the last time he’d been in control for an extended period of time. A small smile touched their face for a moment as Cypher donned the new cloak and began to make contact with people who were willing to lend a stranger food, or water, or shelter in exchange for some small task. In the meantime, Lion’s consciousness slid back into the sword they carried, the sword that he had once wielded, and he began to remember…

~~*~~

 _Instinct had saved him. Some beast had ripped open his gestation pod, and he’d heard its voice in his head even before it had managed to fully open his chamber. There had been a second when he and it—whatever it was, its features were distorted and alien—had met each other’s eyes. Then it had lunged for him, and he had rolled out of the way, then_ thrown _raw power at it; there had been an oddly melodious cry, and it had stopped attacking him. When he looked, breathing hard, it was dead; a large chunk of its body had exploded._

_He left it behind, shaking. It was too large, too misshapen, to move in the trees surrounding him, and if there was one, there had to be others. He climbed into the trees, and stayed there. The sky darkened, and it became cold; he crawled into a hollow tree, and curled up tightly. Warmth oozed throughout his body, from some source he couldn’t name, but as it was helpful, he decided not to question it._

_Day after day passed; he grew quickly, soon learning what could and could not be eaten, what could and could not be drunk. He learned to appreciate the low, constant noise in the forest, and learned to fear when it vanished; at first, he would vanish himself, moving as high into the trees as they would allow, but when the creatures with voices that rang in his head began to chase him there, he began to attack them first. Soon enough, the forest became quiet when_ he _moved._

_He learned to appreciate the silence as much as he had the noise. He had settled near a tree he intended to climb for fruit, but paused when odd noises interrupted his silence. He stilled, listened carefully; none of the noises were familiar. There were voices, but they didn’t ring inside his head; instead, they touched his ears like normal noises. There was a strange ringing that accompanied the movement, and there were soft stepping noises beneath the ringing. He kept listening, eyes narrowed as he tracked the noises, for just a second too long._

_They saw him, and reacted immediately. They grabbed some—some_ things _, he had no conception what they were—and loud bangs issued from them. Instinct saved him again; he twisted away from the bangs and saw puffs of dust and wood where the bangs landed. He didn’t know how to fight these beasts; he ran as quickly as he could, but they chased him down until he came to a massive tree he usually slept in; the branches were too high to jump and grab, so he would need to go around—_

_A monster blocked his path; he turned to take the other way, but there was another monster there. No way around them, either; they had surrounded him against the tree. He backed up as far as he could, snarling; these monsters would surely kill him, but he fully meant to take as many of them with him as he could—_

_One of the monsters had said something, stopped the others. They were watching him closely, so he returned the favor. They moved slowly, cautiously walking towards him; they weren’t holding weapons like the other monsters, and they were keeping their hands where he could see them. His growling quieted as he watched them; if they so much as twitched wrong, he would kill them first. They did reach for him, but still moved slowly and with no weapons, so he remained still. Waiting. Yet, instead of attacking—they could easily hurt him before he could react at this distance—they brushed some of his mane aside to look at his face._

_Something changed in the monster’s face as they looked at him. He stopped growling, but a frown stayed locked on his lips, even as the other monsters lowered their weapons. The monster in front of him gently put a hand on his shoulder, indicated that they wanted him to follow. He did; he already knew that he couldn’t fight these monsters, and that he couldn’t get away from them before they’d catch him. He might be able to sneak away in the night—not if the kind monster stayed with him, though. They’d noticed him shivering, and had placed some cloth thing around his shoulders; he’d thought about shaking it off, but found it was warm and so tucked his head down and snuggled into it._

_The kind monster’s presence and similar, small kindnesses kept him with them until they reached a pile of stones in an area cleared of trees; he’d wanted to stop at the edge of the trees, but the kind monster’s gentle grip on his wrist had pulled him forward into the stone buildings. It took them a week to brush his hair out to smoothness—they refused to simply cut it off—and in the meantime the kind monster taught him language._

_It didn’t take him too long to grasp the intricacies of making sounds like them; he could manage simple, short sentences by the time they’d fixed his hair—he had to admit that it felt nicer all brushed out—and could speak as fluently as the man who’d adopted him after another few weeks. So far as his rescuer was concerned, they were brothers, and so he accepted it along with the name he’d been given: Lion El’Jonson._

~~*~~

Lion awoke on his own; Cypher’s body and mind required much more rest than Lion’s did, and for some reason, Lion taking control over their shared body restored its energy. For now, Lion remained still and listened to his surroundings; whenever this happened, there was usually some nearby threat they needed to escape and quickly. But this time, there was no such threat. Lion considered, then decided to investigate; if there wasn’t an immediate threat, then there had to be some sort of non-immediate threat nearby, and he ought to be prepared.

The building they were in featured a vox-caster, so Lion turned it on as low as he could and still hear it. Interestingly, it was already tuned to a channel exclusively used by the Palace; a group of mostly xenos claiming to be humans had been picked up and escorted there under apparently limited guard. Lion’s brow furrowed; they were treating one of their captives with great respect, and the Custodes had given their permission for all the captives to enter the Throne room before they’d even arrived, though the Inquisitors were dragging their feet about actually obeying.

Lion’s ear twitched; someone entered the room behind him. He made no sign that he had heard them, however; even with his reactions slowed by not being in his proper body, he could still kill them before they could so much as blink. Whoever was behind him didn’t make any aggressive moves, however; instead, they opted to settle on a chair just behind him and listen to the vox-caster along with him.

Lion only grew more confused as he listened to the vox-cast. One of the members of the prisoners was apparently the Emperor’s father—how had Lion never guessed that the Emperor had had a father?—and was a psyker skilled in healing…and not only could he heal the Emperor, but he would do exactly that, right then and there, and no one was going to stop him. None of the Custodes made any move to stop him; instead they all moved to protect him, and to prevent others from interfering with what he was doing.

The man behind Lion shifted when they heard the Emperor’s distant screams, and Lion found himself disturbed by the sound. The Emperor had _never_ screamed, no matter how badly he’d been hurt. But he was screaming now, though Lion found his attention drawn to the sounds of battle just outside the Throne Room; it seemed that about half of the party was fighting something alongside the Custodes. As Lion listened more, it became clear that the palace had been invaded by minions of Khorne, and there wasn’t much between the Emperor and death at their hands. Lion wanted very badly to go to the palace—the need for secrecy be damned!—but he knew what Cypher would say were he awake: charging off without enough information was how Lion tended to get everyone around him killed.

So Lion stayed where he was, and kept listening. The Emperor stopped screaming; the Chaotic minions were pushed back; the portal into their realm was closed. Lion noticed there was a sudden faint pressure in the air where before none had existed; it was familiar when he silently reached out to it, familiar and dimly aware of his mental touch. If he truly needed it, the pressure would respond, somehow; of that much, Lion was certain.

“Pity,” the person behind him commented now the immediate emergency had ended and turned into people readjusting to the Emperor once again being physically present in their lives, instead of merely being a silent, unmoving entity on a throne. Lion turned the vox-caster off entirely, then turned to face them, doing his best to move slowly in case they were mortal.

They weren’t mortal; Lion could tell that much easily enough. But they weren’t a space marine either, and Lion couldn’t recall the Emperor saying anything about any other genetically-engineered soldiers that had been made after the space marines. At the same time, whoever this man was looked so similar to the Emperor—if the Emperor was capable of aging, anyway—that it couldn’t be a coincidence: tall, though slightly shorter than the average space marine; heavily muscled—even moreso than a space marine, though less than a Primarch—black hair, though with several chunks of gray showing; gray eyes in an aged face that were nonetheless sharp and glittered with keen intelligence. Lion was reminded primarily of Malcador in looking at the man, but held his tongue on his questions; he would have to ask Cypher about this man later. “What’s a pity?” he asked.

“That the Emperor didn’t die there. Pardon the heresy,” the man grinned viciously, and Lion suppressed the flash of displeasure, though not before the man noticed it. He chuckled. “Knew you were a loyalist. You say all the right things, but it’s the little things that give you away.” Lion took a breath and made no move; if he needed to, he could draw both Cypher’s guns. “But you know what…Cypher, you said your name was? I don’t think I’m gonna worry about that.”

Definitely not the average Traitor. “Why?” Lion doubted the man would answer, but felt compelled to ask anyway.

“Cause I finally figured out what to have you do in exchange for you bumming around my place for so long. You’re gonna sneak into the Palace, and once you’re in, you’re gonna try and kill the Emperor. If you don’t, well, I’ll just have to give the Dark Angels a call,” the man smirked, watching Lion closely.

Lion was thankful that Cypher’s face didn’t naturally show his thoughts the way his own usually did. He wanted to wake Cypher, wanted to ask him what in the hells he’d gotten them into, wanted to demand to know who this man was…but he didn’t dare. That _would_ show on their face. Lion was on his own, and he couldn’t see a way out of the man’s demands. “Fine,” he grunted, and left. The man genuinely smiled as he did.

Lion waited until they were safely out of his sight and somewhere well hidden before he closed his eyes to shake Cypher awake. _What? What!?_ Cypher yelled at him; their arms twitched towards Cypher’s guns, but Lion stopped him from grabbing them and shooting some innocent bystander.

 _What the hells have you gotten us into!?_ Lion demanded, leaving his memories of the last hour bare for Cypher to see. There was a short pause as Cypher skimmed them, lingering over the last few seconds, where Lion had agreed to the man’s demands.

 _…you realize we have to kill him now,_ Cypher stated after he was finished, flinching under Lion’s barely restrained fury at his lack of explanation. _The man you were talking to is a Thunder Warrior._

 _He can’t be, the Emperor said they all died in their last battle,_ Lion protested immediately.

 _He lied,_ Cypher answered impatiently. _They won, and the Emperor had the rest of them killed by his Custodes. A few of them escaped; some hid themselves in places like this…the rest stowed away on board ships and went out ahead of the Crusade, warning people not to ally with the Emperor willingly. I’m pretty sure that guy’s the only one left, and I have no idea how he managed to survive for more than ten thousand years._

Lion was silent for a long time. _…the Emperor wouldn’t do something like that. Not without a really good reason,_ he eventually said. The idea shook Lion’s trust of the Emperor, and he wasn’t sure he could tolerate his trust being shaken any further. Not with the Dark Angels having done…everything that they had been doing for ten thousand years.

 _Look, either the Emperor is lying, or the Thunder Warrior is, and I can’t think of any reason for someone to lie about being on the losing side of a genocide. And it isn’t like the Emperor was unwilling to slaughter entire races that got in the way of his Imperium,_ Cypher responded. _Either way, it doesn’t matter. The Thunder Warrior knows too much about us, and we can’t trust him not to call the Dark Angels anyway, even if we do somehow manage to survive killing the Emperor._

Lion sighed. _Fine. We probably should try and get to the Emperor again…if for no other reason than to ask if his story is true._ Lion’s other reason for wanting to see the Emperor hadn’t changed, and neither had the chances of Lion—through Cypher—actually getting to the Emperor. Cypher didn’t bother to point that out, and Lion once again allowed Cypher back in control; he’d had just enough rest to hopefully be able to take out the Thunder Warrior.

In the meantime, Lion waited. 

~~*~~

Lion watched as Cypher stalked through the building he’d been staying in in search of the Thunder Warrior; it was much larger than Lion had realized, and there weren’t very many hiding places Cypher could take advantage of. Even so, Cypher still managed to stay absolutely silent and move without anyone seeing him—there were far more people in the building than Lion had realized, too—and eventually managed to track down the Thunder Warrior.

The Thunder Warrior had made his way up to the highest point in the building, and the only room to feature a balcony. It looked out over the portion of the Terran underhive that came right up to the edge of the planet’s sole remaining mountain range; the view was almost beautiful, as the few lights that shimmered through the smog almost looked like the stars that could no longer be seen from the planet’s surface. Lion and Cypher both knew the Warrior hadn’t heard them enter, but they both also knew the Warrior somehow knew they were there. Lion urged caution, and Cypher obeyed, though he did draw his laser pistol.

“I kind of hoped you’d be stupid enough come back,” the Warrior said without moving. “Let me guess, you’re here to kill me? What makes you think that you’ll succeed where even the Custodians failed, _space marine_?” He spat the term with venom, finally turning around. There was rage in his eyes, and hatred twisted his face for the usurper who had stolen his and his brothers’ rightful place.

Lion made their shoulder shrug. “Felt like being stupid today,” Cypher replied. “Or maybe I’d rather have death at your hands than at the hands of the Emperor or his Custodes,” Lion added. They both wondered if the Thunder Warrior could tell that two different people had spoken; for his part, Lion suspected the Warrior couldn’t tell. Cypher held his peace.

The Warrior moved suddenly, and at a speed that would have startled anyone who wasn’t a Primarch or a Custodian. Cypher jerked out of control, leaving Lion alone in their head for a moment; Lion simply pulled the trigger on the gun, firing into the Thunder Warrior’s leg; they swore, but continued forward. Lion saw the Warrior make a fist and punch towards their chest. He pivoted so the fist made contact with the space they had filled a moment earlier and drew his bolt pistol.

He didn’t quite manage to get it level with the Warrior’s chest before they smacked his arm away; they moved ever so slightly faster than Cypher’s body could, and Lion was frustrated by being able to see the blows coming but not being able to evade them. He tried to get out of close range of the Thunder Warrior, but the room and building was too enclosed for them to get much mobility, and the Warrior was far too eager to close the distance and continue punching them.

And they could hit extremely hard, hard enough to bruise and even crack some of their smaller bones. Lion wound up falling back, shooting at the Warrior whenever he could, and protecting his neck and head whenever he couldn’t. The Warrior, in turn, focused his punches on their stomach, making it difficult for Lion to breathe and fight back. After a while, the Warrior drew a heavy dagger and shoved it through the reinforced, solidified bone that protected their chest and into their primary heart. Lion yelled in pain, and managed to return a punch to the side of the Warrior’s head.

It seemed that the Warrior was waiting for him to do exactly that; they grabbed Lion’s sword and pulled it free of the scabbard. Cypher shrieked and fell to his knees, trying to retrieve the sword; Lion could not react. His attention was split, flickering between feeling only the confines of his sword, feeling the sudden loss in Cypher’s mind, and feeling a new, wholly alien presence.

The Thunder Warrior’s memories seared through Lion; he saw the truth of the world as the Warrior saw it: they had been created by the Emperor’s hand out of nothing but a pool of blood, to be one commander among many. They had been special, as a commander, able to consider the results of their actions, and able to adapt unlike the Warriors he commanded. They merely obeyed and did what he—the Thunder Warrior thought of himself as a he—told them. He had conquered enemy after enemy for the Emperor, and after the battles, he usually allowed his men to take what they wanted from those they had conquered; it was a reward, he felt, for doing so well in battle, but the Emperor and his Custodes hadn’t agreed.

The night of the final battle, a night of celebration for the commanders primarily, as they allowed their men to do as they pleased. The commanders had wondered what enemies they would face next, what enemies they would make fall before the might of their Emperor and his dream they supported so unquestioningly. Then fire and death from the golden blades of those who commanded _them_ , and there had been no emotion on their faces. No mercy, no desire for violence; for the Custodes, this had merely been a job. The Warrior had fled into the depths of the nearest city, and had avoided all contact for so long…

~~*~~

_The day Lion had last fought—a fight between himself and Luther, his best and closest friend, the friend who had betrayed him—Caliban had ripped itself apart. He had thought his ships could land on the planet they had hoped would be their safe haven of rest, where they could replenish their numbers in relative peace…but the planetary defenses had fired on them, so Lion had ordered an orbital bombardment. Perhaps he had gone too far._

_It had taken almost an hour to get to this point, where Lion had finally beaten Luther to the point he hoped Luther could fight no more. Lion was startled when, about to ask if Luther would yield, Luther had_ thrown _power at him, Chaotic power that Lion was now all too familiar with; he resisted, as he had in his youth when faced with the great beasts he had finally purged from the planet. For an instant, Lion had seen horror and regret on his friend’s face, and Luther had hesitated to deliver the final blow. Just enough time for Lion to recover, enough time to grab his sword—_

_Then fire and death ripping out of suddenly purple skies. A Warp Storm conjured seemingly from nothing but the will of the Chaos Gods the Emperor had hidden from everyone, even his Primarchs. Lion was ripped free of his body, looked around and saw that everyone on the surface of Caliban was undergoing the same treatment; Traitor Dark Angels were swapped into the bodies of Loyalists, Loyalists swapped with the Traitors who had followed Luther. Luther himself was briefly torn out of his body, but somehow managed to reclaim his own; a Dark Angel, Lion wasn’t sure if they followed him or Luther, grabbed Lion’s sword and pain had shrieked through them both—_

~~*~~

Pursuit never came, and the Warrior eventually began to make contact with others once again. Every now and then, he found other Thunder Warriors who had survived the purge; most decided to leave Terra behind, stowing on board ships bound for Mars and the Mechanicum. There, they would volunteer for scouting missions to take them to the ancient Forge Worlds, and once outside of the system would stop on planet after planet, warning of the golden being that would follow them—it might take centuries, but _he_ would come—and of the peace he offered that covered the truth of eternal war.

The Warrior—Primam Tonat he called himself—had opted to stay on Terra, believing that the Custodes and the Emperor would never think to look for him there. Slowly he’d built up a network of contacts, seeding dissent on Terra in the Emperor’s own backyard, under his and Malcador’s own nose; one day, he would have an army strong enough to take the Emperor on—

The Emperor’s Great Sons—his _Primarchs_ , and the Thunder Warrior thought of them with as much hatred as he held for the Emperor himself—broke first, and the Emperor was left half-dead. It wouldn’t be honorable to attack the Emperor now, and Primam felt the other side of the battle—Chaos or whatever it was—was just as horrible as the Emperor, if in different ways and not as veiled. Primam had no interest or use for gods; they did nothing useful for anyone, including their followers, so he stayed out of their doings.

The Emperor’s healing was precisely the sort of thing he’d been waiting for…

~~*~~

_Shouting had woken Lion, shouting that had sounded inside his skull like the voices of the Great Beasts. “Who are you? Get out of my head!” Sounds had followed: the sound of someone’s power armor scraping against bare stone as they stood up, the sound of bare sword shirring against dirt, someone groaning. Lion was groaning—wait, was he? Someone was shoving against him, trying to get past him to control…_

_A body. Not Lion’s body. It was too slow, and too weak, and his senses were too dull. Lion strained to remember, and knew that whoever was in his mind saw the memories with him; fire, death, destruction, souls swapping every which way…if it had been impossible to tell which of the Dark Angels were traitor before, it was thousands of times worse now. “Gods,” the other voice commented. “Primarch el’Jonson…I’m sorry for shouting…” they muttered, as they managed to fight Lion’s instinctive control enough to move. They pushed themselves into a sit, pulled their legs bent, and tucked their head between their knees. Now Lion could feel the pain that pulsed through them—through him, through their shared body—with every beat of their twinned hearts._

_They had bigger things to worry about than shouting. Lion’s attention fell inwards, and for a moment, he saw the space marine whose body he was sharing: one of his older sons, who had been training to be the Cypher of his old knightly order before the Emperor, and the Great Crusade, and…everything else. Lion couldn’t look him in the face for long; he’d failed this son like he had all the others. But there was no time to waste on thoughts of failure; Lion had to make up for it and could not do so if he was dwelling on the past…he took a breath and looked at himself._

_He looked much the same as he had, but there was a glowing cord stretching from him to…somewhere. Outside of the space marine’s mind—instinct whispered to Lion that that was the name of this place he stood in, and that the space marine saw what they did but didn’t understand. Lion picked up the cord and followed it back to its origin; as he did, his senses dulled further, and his control over the space marine weakened, eventually falling away completely. Lion felt, more than he heard, a sigh of relief as his own mind was trammeled into a basic awareness of an inflexible metal body…a sword. Two-handed, a handle of gold and red gems—the Emperor had never identified what sort of gem—leather wrapping, and a pale inner light that was much stronger now than it had been. Lion’s light, and it would fade to uselessness if Lion was separated from it for too long…_

_A scabbard surrounded him; wood, real wood lined it, and mechanisms in the metal around the wood exuded oil to keep the wood soft, and other oils to keep the blade firm. Lion had never needed to clean the blade; he merely resheathed it and it became clean, and now he knew why. There were elegant, masterful carvings on the upper portion of the sheath, carvings that Lion had been meant to add to after the Crusade, to tell his story as he saw fit…and now Lion had no hands to do so._

_Except._

_Except he could reach out, into the body of the space marine carrying him._

_He could step out of the sword, back into their body, and feel human once again._

_It would be only one more step from there to wholly take control of the space marine’s body, and one more step after that to ensure they never interfered with him again. Neither step would be hard, and all Lion would have to do afterwards would make sure the sword that was his real body would stay with him always._

_Lion forced himself to stay back. The body rightfully belonged to the space marine. It was not his, and could not be his, no matter how badly he wanted to feel. He would take control only if the space marine asked, and only force the issue to save their life; wordless thanks shone in the space marine’s mind as the decision became clear._

_There were other decisions to make. The space marine had seen their master, the old Cypher first for their Order and then for the Dark Angels die, and had felt the life leave their shattered, genetically-enhanced body. His training had been incomplete, but Lion decided that didn’t matter; no one else was even remotely close, and so this space marine was Cypher now. A pity they could not perform the full ceremony to make it official…but merely knowing they were Cypher would have to do. Better for the rest of the galaxy to know them as Cypher as well; Chaos was still strong, and Lion could not risk them learning that he was trapped in a blade that could be transferred from one body to another. They could take him from Cypher, and place him on another, Chaos-corrupted body, force him to take control…_

_But he couldn’t trust his own Legion either. Souls had been swapped thousands of times over, and there was no way to tell who was traitor and who was loyalist without being able to read their souls…Lion couldn’t do that without being placed on each of them, one by one, and that would reveal his secret. Even then, he couldn’t do anything about the traitors, save for leaving them as soulless husks…he would need to stay away from them as much as possible, which meant that Cypher—they were loyal, as their station demanded, to the ancient traditions and history of the Dark Angels and the knights of old who had come before them—would be seen as a traitor. There was no other option._

~~*~~

The Thunder Warrior had been _made_ , not born, not the way Cypher had been; yet he had a soul, and Lion could feel it trying to struggle against his own strength. Lion could take the Warrior’s body for his own, if he wished; he could shove the soul aside and kill it, and enjoy a new body with reactions and senses close to his own. It wouldn’t even take much effort. Instead, he forced the Warrior to hold the sword out, hilt first, to Cypher. He forced the Warrior to speak. “Take it!”

Cypher did. Lion’s awareness of the Warrior’s mind vanished, and the feeling of dislocation vanished as Cypher slid his blade home. Once again, Lion felt Cypher’s mind, a mind he knew as well as his own by now. For a moment, they breathed. Lion didn’t resist when Cypher raised his bolt pistol and emptied its magazine into the Warrior’s head. Neither of them could risk his survival, though, so Cypher pulled the dagger out of his own chest and stabbed the Warrior’s corpse dozens of times. Just to make absolutely certain, Cypher then dismembered the corpse and scattered the pieces; it would take a surgeon with the Emperor’s skill to patch the Warrior back together.

Lion was silent as they left. Cypher managed to find a doctor to repair their damaged primary heart, though they had to remain awake and help them cut through the armored bone that covered the organ. The Thunder Warrior had been capable of many things: love, passion, loyalty, along with fear, anger, and above all, hatred. But he had not been capable of lying; he couldn’t even conceive of the idea of not telling the truth. Cypher had been correct; the Emperor had created the Thunder Warriors, and then he had destroyed them. In fifteen thousand years, the Warrior had never understood why.

Lion stayed silent the entire way through Cypher’s surgery. He stayed silent while Cypher found a place on a ship that had desperate need of an additional crew member, and didn’t care where that crew member came from. He stayed silent while the ship made its way out to the edge of the system, and only spoke after they had been in the Warp for what felt like a week.

_Can we trust the Emperor?_

Cypher didn’t answer for a long time. _You know him better than I do._

 _I…don’t think we can. But he is the only way for me to get back into my proper body._ Lion eventually replied. _…the Alpha Legion took us in once,_ he said, after another day of Warp travel.

 _You think they’ll do it again? Considering how we parted last time?_ Cypher asked.

_It’s worth a shot._

**Author's Note:**

> Hon hon, am so punny! -shot- Also no, Primam Tonat is not dead. He lived for fifteen thousand years on account of he was a secret Perpetual, and not even he is aware of this. The full dismemberment just means it'll take him a wee bit longer to come back. Sadly, I have not written anything else about him that I have completed. But he is still alive, is my point.
> 
> Peep ownership:  
> Games Workshop: WH40k and related  
> me: the writing and Primam Tonat


End file.
